The sides
also agreed to advance legislation for equal share of the national burden. ...

Under the
proposal, compulsory army service for men will be shortened from three to two
years. Soldiers who continue to a third year will receive minimum wage and a
grant for future academic studies.

The
agreed-upon outline for equal share of the national burden also states that
each year some 1,800 "diligent" yeshiva students will be eligible to
receive a special grant, but yeshiva students between the ages of 21 and 26 who
will discontinue their studies after receiving an exemption from army service
will be fined.

Ultra-Orthodox
recruits aged 21 and under will have the option of deferring their army
service. They will later be divided into three categories: Those who serve in
the army; those who will perform national service and those who are classified
as "persistent" yeshiva students.

Only when
the ultra-Orthodox are in the opposition will Finance Minister Lapid be able to
cut the huge budgets they receive, both for their yeshivas and in the stipends for
married Torah learners. ...

Only when
the ultra-Orthodox are in the opposition will Lapid be able to replace the
criterion for receiving state-subsidized housing from “years of marriage,” the
criterion outgoing Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias tailored for
the ultra-Orthodox, to “utilization of employment potential,” which is more
just and suited to secular and religious Zionist citizens. …

Only when
there are no ultra-Orthodox in the government will it be possible to impose on
them the core school curriculum and conscription into the Israel Defense
Forces.

Let one thing be clear: all
this political maneuvering has very little to do with the influence of religion
on life in Israel. That will continue to be substantial.

Even with the
religious parties in the opposition, Israel will be still a country where most
yeshiva students will not serve in the army, the Sabbath will be an officially
enforced day of rest, and only kosher food will still be served in the army.
There will still be rabbinical marriages although civil
marriages may finally be possible through a series of
interim arrangements.

But whatever the shape —
and stability — of the ruling coalition that finally emerges, the veto power of
the rabbis has been blunted and may finally be broken.

It is
difficult to know what will happen. Will the haredi parties undergo a
metamorphosis?

Will the traditional Ashkenazi haredi leadership give way to a
more pragmatic leadership, that will also represent the interests of the so
called “modern haredim,” who are trying to make their out of the haredi ghetto?

And what will happen to Shas after Rabbi Ovadia, who will probably no longer be
with us for the elections to the 20th Knesset?

Alongside
the Haredi world's struggle against their inclusion in the military draft and
matters of principle regarding religion and state, there is another price no
less painful they will pay as the incoming government takes office: When they
take their seats on the opposition benches, they will be lamenting not only the
"harm" the new government will do to the Torah world but also more
temporal, material losses.

The public
conversation about equal sharing of the civic burden and the exclusion of the
Haredi parties from the developing government coalition appears to be the start
of a similar process for the Haredim.

Their community will increasingly have to
accept work, national and military service and modern education. Along the way,
there will probably be a culture war, with some factions of Israeli society
becoming radicalized.

Under the
plan, only those who fully exploit their earning potential would be entitled to
a range of government benefits, among them allowances. The treasury is now
examining where these conditions can be applied and plans to lay out proposals
for the new Finance minister and government.

The
assumption is that a government without ultra-Orthodox parties provides a
historic opportunity to fix Israel's allowances system and increase incentives
for working by slashing payments.

Attorney General Weinstein decided that
the courts that take action against community members who file a case in state
courts or provide testimony to Israeli police could be found guilty for
obstruction of justice, deposing testimony, or harassing witnesses.

According to Rabbi Regev, "The time has come for the ultra-Orthodox
rabbinic authorities to understand that Israeli law applies to them as well.

Their attempts to thwart legal proceedings in State courts will ultimately
summon them into those same courts that they so disdain.

No one has the right
to threaten or blackmail individuals who for using the State's judicial system.
Hiddush will continue to act against these criminal occurrences."

Adina
Bar-Shalom, the eldest daughter of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,
said on Tuesday that the lack of English and Mathematics education in haredi
schools was a serious obstacle in increasing the numbers of haredim in higher
education.

“It’s not
possible to learn English or Math in a one-year pre-college preparatory
course,” said Bar Shalom. “More than 50 percent of students who come to us do
not succeed in English.”

She
continued saying that this failure caused many students to drop out of college
altogether.

A group of
senior national religious rabbis led by Kiryat Arba’s chief rabbi, Dov Lior,
sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the leaders of all
political factions calling on them not to “harm” the ability of Torah students
to continue their studies.

IDI Vice
President of Research Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer critiques several aspects of
many of the current proposals for integrating the ultra-Orthodox into the army
and calls on the Israeli public to stand firm on its demand for an arrangement
that is fair and equitable.

I'd like
to propose a plan. It's something that would still be seen as innately unfair
by those who do not believe that charedim learning Torah contributes to
Israel's national welfare, but at least they ought to see the value in reaching
a mutually acceptable compromise.

And it's something that ought to be
acceptable to charedim. The reason is that it is the approach of the father of
the yeshivah world, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin of Volozhin, otherwise
known as the Netziv.

It is
time for the Israeli government to confess its sins and accept the
orthodox/Hareidi community for what it is.

What could be more absurd than a
group of people tripping over themselves while trying to make peace with those
who have been violently trying to destroy us for the past 70 years, and yet are
unable to reach out and make peace with their own brothers?!

Lin Dror and her fiancé,
members of a Reform synagogue in Mod’iin, have decided that they do not want to
leave their country to marry.

Next Thursday, March 21, 2013, they will marry on
the steps of the Knesset in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon from
Kehilat Yozma, and Rabbi Gilad Kariv, head of the Israel Movement for
Progressive Judaism (IMPJ).

At first
glance, Benn's article seems to attack all rabbis and the rabbinate as a
profession, but a close reading makes clear that he intended to say that there
are no moderate Chief Rabbinate rabbis, and there will be no such moderate
rabbis so long as the Chief Rabbinate is part of a political system with
coercive power.

At the end
of his editorial, Benn writes that "those who wish to observe halakha can
choose their rabbis and go on their way". The Israeli public has already
internalized this instruction and is choosing its rabbis, many of whom are not
affiliated with the Chief Rabbinate.

[T]he private member’s bill to be put before the Knesset, which was
initiated this week through the first cooperative legislation between the Yesh
Atid and Bayit Yehudi parties.

In their joint venture, MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh
Atid) and Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli (Bayit Yehudi) related to the selection process
for the State Committee for the Appointment of Dayanim (Rabbinical Court
Judges). ...

The bill
proposed by MKs Lavie and Mualem-Rafaeli expands the number of members of the
Committee for the Appointment of Dayanim from its present 10 (which is in and
of itself a problem as it is an even number) to 11 members.

They too are
sandwiched between a new religious Jewish world and the old manifestation of
Judaism.

They have not yet recognized the fact that a vast new horizon has
opened up, which demands a new and bold religious Judaism that will inspire and
make itself and halacha (Jewish law) desirable to the Israeli
mainstream.

Bennett is
different from his predecessors at the top of the National Religious Party.

On
the one hand, he was the first to shake off the deeply-rooted Haredi
patronizing attitude toward the national-religious community and is also
playing a central role in what is viewed as an anti-Haredi move.

On the other
hand, he never studied in yeshiva and does not speak with the basic Torah
vocabulary of his NRP predecessors, even those who were no great scholars.

Ultra-Orthodox
leaders are in an uproar because religious Zionists got the upper hand in the
recent elections, and will probably be part of the next government while haredi
representatives won’t. They’re yelling about the destruction of the “world of
Torah” that will result from the societal reforms that Bayit Yehudi insists
upon.

So here’s
a news flash for my haredi brethren: You do not possess exclusivity on “the
world of Torah,” and in historic perspective, you may yet come to thank Bayit
Yehudi for nudging you to a better place.

“This
incident shows how difficult it is for many women to obtain a halakhic divorce,
allowing them to remarry,” said Ben-Dahan. “The culprit in this case is
actually considered a solid member of the community, who preferred to sit in
jail for years rather than give a divorce to his wife!”

“I believe
that if we make things harder for them they will be more amenable to granting
the get. I intend to introduce legislations in the coming days that will
prescribe much harder conditions for such prisoners. I believe that with proper
legislation we can solve many of these cases,” he added.

Apart from
being morally repugnant, Israel’s obstinate failure to embrace Jewish religious
pluralism must be seen as foolhardy and a strategic liability....

It is time
for Israel to recognize that Reform and Conservative Jews are not a
watered-down form of the real thing. We are not “lesser than.” We are as
passionate about and committed to our practices as the Orthodox are to theirs.

The
relationship between Israel and the overwhelming majority of world Jewry that
does not identify as Orthodox cannot continue to be one of unrequited love. It
is time to fully recognize us and to accept us as a real, vibrant and equally
genuine part of the Jewish State.

The
Hiddush plan posits a new Basic Law: Freedom of Religion and Conscience, to be
added to the 14 existing basic laws.

This law would stipulate that any school
that does not teach a full core curriculum in compliance with Education
Ministry rules would be denied public funding.

The law would also categorize
the exclusion of women as a criminal offense, provide equal stipends for each
child rather than discriminating in favor of large families, and cancel
subsidies for nonworking young men studying in yeshivas.

How will
we justify this vast gap between their lives in the secular, day-today world
and their lives in the place dearest to us – our traditions, the synagogue, and
our community?

These are the questions that as religious feminists we are
asking ourselves on International Women’s Day.

But it is clear that these
questions should also concern the entire religious community, including the
rabbis who lead it. The challenge can and should be dealt with, and there is no
doubt this will happen sooner or later.

“Maybe
Ruth was Boaz’s wife, but that’s not enough of a reason to have a street named
after her. Also Rachel – she didn’t do what he father wanted her to do, she had
a mind of her own.”

The same goes for a number of other streets in the capital.
That is, on the few streets that are actually named for women, says Rachel
Azaria, a Jerusalem City Councilwoman who joined the students on their protest
campaign.

The
segregation of women from synagogue activities does not only hurt women but
also hurts the place itself, which loses its authenticity and lives in a gone
reality. A call for integrity and softness.

Our
spiritual lives are divided by a partition, just like a synagogue. We push to
the other side of that internal partition all the vital foundations of healthy
critical thinking, compassion, and common sense.

Spiritual
experience demands openness and listening, both inward and outward. How can we
sing Lord’s song with a clenched fist?

So no more
excuses! The call of Jewish destiny and the cry of previous generations must no
longer be ignored. It is time for American, Canadian, Australian, British and
other Orthodox Jews to set an example for their brethren, leave behind the
exile and finally come home.

“Most Jews
in the world now live in developed western democracies, where there is little
pressure to emigrate,” said DellaPergola, an expert on Jewish demography.
“Economic crises or anti-Semitism do enhance Jewish migration, but not to the
point that we have witnessed so many times in the past.”

We are
increasingly unwilling to give the Israeli government a pass on the standards
to which we hold the rest of the world. And we believe that the relationship
between Israel and Diaspora Jews should be a two-way street, in which we each
acknowledge that we have much to learn from the other.

Nefesh
B’Nefesh conducted a week of aliyah mega events and fairs in six major cities
across North America together with the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth
LeIsrael, JNF-USA, and Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

After
coming to terms with the fact that they won’t sit in the next government,
ultra-Orthodox politicians reportedly threatened Sunday to establish separate
institutions for Jewish conversion if regulations become too lenient and no
longer conform to the Chief Rabbinate’s standards.

The
Ne'emanei Torah Va'Avodah religious Zionist movement, which has been fighting
to reduce segregation for years, said in response to the Education Ministry's
intervention: "We believe that the halachic assumption encouraging
segregation, which the document implies to, stems from perceptions that do not
match halachic and ideological stances which exist at this time."

As first
reported Monday by Army Radio, the new rules provide for mixed classrooms
through the 3rd grade, but from 4th through 6th grade, boys and girls will
study separately in state religious schools.

The
directive also allows each school to vary that policy and impose gender
separation in earlier grades or dispense with it in later grades with the support
of two-thirds of the pupils’ parents. Any vote by the parents will apply to the
school for a period of six years.

As is
basically the case already, in state religious junior highs and high schools,
all classes will be separated by gender unless a special exception is made with
the approval of the ministry’s state religious education council.

I am glad
that the court decided in favor of the teacher, but I am saddened by the fact
that she had to sue in order to get justice.

The situation should not have
ended up a legal battle. It should have been turned into a teachable moment for
the school’s students. Not only did the school fail to give the teacher credit
for aspiring to motherhood, it didn’t give the teenage girls due credit either.

Today, we have two sets of religious
parties in the Knesset. One set, the ultra-Orthodox parties (Degel Hatorah and
Shas), serve as a subsection of the People of Israel, the only subsection that
they deem to be truly legitimate heirs of our ancestors—their own community.

The other set, the National-Religious
party (Habayit Hayehudi), serves the land of Israel. Both parties will
sacrifice anything upon the altar of their respective causes, and neither of
them is serving the cause of the Torah. Therefore, they are both guilty of a
form of idolatry.

At the
heart of Ben-Shetreet's suspension seems to be the idea of the personal example
that she set for other religious young women; If her school or community
celebrated her performance, as opposed to condemning it, her singing might
encourage other religious young women to sing in front of men, too.

Instead of
coining such a message abhorrent, religious educators should be promoting it.

Representing several
of these women, last week we filed a lawsuit against the city of Beit Shemesh,
claiming that city authorities have allowed a small but extreme sect of
ultra-Orthodox Jews to act as a “modesty police” against the city’s residents.

The suit centers on street signs that were put up in public places telling women they
can only enter wearing “proper dress” and a description of the kind of dress
that is considered proper.

City officials, including the ultra-Orthodox mayor
of Beit Shemesh, have so far refused to intervene and act against the radical
group behind these signs, thereby giving the signs tacit approval.

They are also bracing for
reduced clout at the municipal level; this would be mainly felt at haredi
institutions, which would lose financial support of anywhere between 500
million shekels ($134 million) and 1 billion shekels ($268 million) ,..

Independent haredi schools
that are not supervised by the Education Ministry, and whose curriculum does
not include core subjects, might also lose funding. These schools, whose
student population stands at about 50,000, get about 300 shekels ($80) per
student (55% of the budgeting for a secular pupil).

Some 9,000 yeshiva students
might lose their eligibility for income support, which currently stands at a
monthly allowance of 1,100 shekels ($295).

MK Rabbi
Shai Piron, who is number two on the Yesh Atid list, and has been mentioned as
a possible candidate for education minister, was put on the defensive today for
advising someone on a religious internet forum in 2002 during the second
intifada not to sell his house to an Arab, Army Radio reported Tuesday.

In 1986,
bus stops in Israel were torched one after the other. The culprits, young
ultra-Orthodox men, explained that they had set fire to the bus stops because
of "posters of abomination" hung on them, which showed models in revealing
swimsuits.

Now, 27
years later, the Chabad Center is demanding 10% of the inheritance of Gottex
founder Lea Gottlieb, who was considered Israel's "swimsuit queen."
According to estimates, Gottlieb's estate is worth tens of millions of shekels.

Several
prominent American Jewish organizations representing the Orthodox community
have signed a letter calling on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to “secure”
the Mount of Olives and its 3,000-year-old Jewish graveyard from what they
described as “continuous violence against visitors, rampant grave desecrations,
dumping of refuse and gross defilement of the cemetery by local Arab youths.”

The 130-year old Ottoman
era Jerusalem train station will reopen this spring as a cultural and
entertainment center, which will be open on the Sabbath. The project includes
landmark buildings, a park, restaurants and fashion stores.

An arson
attack was carried out on a Tiv Taam store, part of a nationwide chain that
operates on Shabbos and sells non-kosher merchandise.

Police investigators are
certain the blaze that caused heavy damage to the store was the result of
arson, with the store owner and chain management calling the scene “one similar
to a suicide bombing attack”.

“Every Jew
that goes to the Temple Mount puts another stone in the building of the Temple,
and is making another step to fulfill Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount,”
MK Feiglin told viewers. That is precisely what makes Muslims nervous.

Feiglin,
for his part, told Army Radio on
Tuesday that he supports the Women of the Wall’s fight to pray as they wish at
the Western Wall.

For
Jews, the entire area of the Temple Mount is holy and cannot be used for
secular purposes. Nowadays, observant Jews who do go up enter only those parts
that are outside the area where the Holy Temple once stood.

Before going up,
they go to amikve (ritual bath) and they do not wear leather shoes on
the mount. While on the Temple Mount they are constantly aware that they are
standing on the holiest spot of Judaism. ...

Muslims
also hold that the entire area of the Temple Mount (or, as they call it, Haram
al-Sharif) is sacred and inviolable; nevertheless, they also permit all
kinds of secular activities on the mount.